He was a merchant and a banker; his ships rode at anchor
In the harbor; he had fortune and fame
He lunched on Wall Street with the gentry
In the early 19th century
But he had a most unfortunate name

Preserved Fish, did you ever wish
More than your name had gone down in history?
Oh Preserved, what'd you do to deserve it?
To have a name that caused you so much misery?

You went to school with students
Named Patience and Prudence
But their religious names were not so odd
You were preserved from sin, preserved in grace
But not preserved from your classmates
You must have suffered hard in that schoolyard.

Preserved Fish, did you ever wish
That your name didn't bring to mind sardines?
Oh Preserved, what'd you do to deserve it?
How could your Quaker parents be so mean?

Nowadays we're just as bad
We name our kids for the latest fad
We didn't learn a single thing from you
We've got parents who just can't spell
We've got a dumb blonde named for a French hotel
What's a poor little kid supposed to do?

Preserved Fish, did you ever wish
For a name that didn't sound like pickled herring?
Oh Preserved, what'd you do to deserve it?
What made your saintly parents so uncaring?

So as you name your sons and daughters
Just remember that you ought to
Give them names that won't make them ashamed
I'd like to ask Preserved's parents if they ever wished they hadn't
Forced their son to live with such an awful name

Preserved Fish, did you ever wish
For a name that didn't sound like an order of smelts?
Oh Preserved, what'd you do to deserve it?
Did anyone ever ask you how you felt?

Preserved Fish (1766-1846) was a prominent New York City
shipping merchant in the early 1800s. In 1822, he founded the shipping
company Fish, Grinnell & Co., which later grew into Grinnell, Minturn
& Co., a California clipper ship company. "Preserved" (pronounced with
three syllables) was a fairly common Quaker name, meaning "preserved
from sin" or "preserved in grace," and the Fish family was prominent
in New York politics, producing Hamilton Fish, the secretary of state
after whom Hamilton
Fish Park in the Lower East Side is named. Preserved Fish is buried
in the Marble Cemetery.